Livingstone Putting Progress in Its Place

Progress in Human Geography
http://phg.sagepub.com
Putting progress in its place

David N. Livingstone
Prog Hum Geogr 2006; 30; 559
DOI: 10.1177/0309132506070168
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Progress in Human Geography 30, 5 (2006) pp. 559587
Progress in Human Geography Lecture*
Putting progress in its place

David N. Livingstone**
School of Geography, Queens University, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK
Abstract: The idea of progress disconcerts. While it is enshrined as an object in our research
audit culture, its very existence is queried in many groves of the modern academy. Here I contend
that the idea of progress in geography has meant different things, at different times, in different
places, and that it has been put to different cultural and political uses. The realization that progress
in geography has its own geography might lead us in the direction of destabilizing the notion to the
point of undermining it altogether. I believe that to be mistaken. Instead I argue for the retrieval of
a chastened form of the idea of progress as a regulative ideal both epistemologically and morally.
Key words: geography of ideas, knowledge, local, morality, place, progress, regulative ideals.
I Progress? Knowledge: The Seed of All Progress. At

There is something unsettling about the idea the same time, in what surely must count as
of progress. On the one hand, we live in a one of the great intellectual reversals of
time obsessed with progress in research and recent times, the idea of progress has become
in ways of measuring it. Research Councils deeply unfashionable in certain circles.
elaborate programme after programme to Rortyan pragmatists, social constructivists
sponsor investigation into everything from and deconstructionists of various stripes are
the use of detection technologies to make cynical about the very notion of progress in
progress in the fight against crime, to ways the sense of finding out truth about the world
of conducting stem cell experimentation that and the interventions of their disciples in our
keeps scientific progress and social responsi- own discipline, as Keith Bassett (1999: 28)
bility in tandem. Thus the National Institutes pointed out a few years ago, would seem to
of Health, in developing their self-styled render the very title of the journal sponsoring
roadmap for the twenty-first century, aim to this lecture Progress in Human Geography
identify those initiatives that will have the a heroic but increasingly empty gesture.
most profound impact on the progress of This destabilizing scepticism has drawn fur-
medical research, both in the United States ther support from what critics variously dis-
and worldwide. The Royal Geographical miss as the fog from France or the school of
Society itself tied its twenty-first-century 10 Higher Dismissiveness (Haack, 1998).
million fund-raising appeal to the slogan Thinkers as diverse as Foucault, Barthes,
*This paper was presented as the Progress in Human Geography lecture to the annual conference of the
Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers annual conference, London, 1 September 2005.
**Email: d.livingstone@qub.ac.uk
2006 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0309132506070168

560 Putting progress in its place
Deluze and Derrida to take a random II Contesting progress: nature,

sample have traded their wares under such genealogy, demise
signifiers as wholesale reflexivity, scepticism In a classic essay first published in 1956, the
towards grand theory, the last phase of aesthetic philosopher and political theorist
metaphysics, the demise of totalising dis- W.B. Gallie elaborated his views on what he
courses, the dissolution of meta-narratives called Essentially contested concepts. Such
and such like. So all-pervasive has this disillu- entities as art, democracy, science, religion,
sionment become, that Ernest Tuvesan and social justice, he reckoned, might be
(1993: 517) could observe over a decade ago thought of as essentially contested in the
that the collapse of the idea of progress has sense that they defy specification in terms of
left an enormous vacuum which it will be necessary and sufficient conditions. As such
perhaps the principal task of the next century they are to be understood historically in terms
to fill. of their meaning in particular times and
The polarities of opinion here advertised spaces. In my view the idea of progress (like,
seem to confirm the observation of Jean say, health, medicine, beauty, freedom, gov-
Braudrillard (1992: 22) that progress carries ernment, the state all of which are compa-
on, but the idea of progress has vanished . . . rable candidates) displays the features of
such is the banal destiny of all great ideals in essential contestation in the sense that debate
what could be called postmodernity. In the over its nature is inescapably permanent and
midst of this blooming buzzing confusion, as without resolution.
William James might have described it, it may The concepts essential contestedness,
be thought foolhardy to take as the subject of moreover, is not hard to recognize. Is progress
the Progress in Geography lecture the theme to be measured by greater power over nature,
of the geography of progress. To some, tack- the democratization of happiness, higher
ling the subject at all will seem to run against gross national product, more information,
the spirit of the times and thus expose its increased cognitive content, greater special-
author as hopelessly jejune; to others, casting ization, better adapted-ness to environment,
any doubts on the contemporary ideology of more precise predictions? Is it not the case
progress is simply myopic, worse, irresponsi- that progress in one sphere is likely to be
ble. Besides, the scope of the subject is so counterbalanced by decline in another? In the
enormous, that the possibilities for saying ancient world, for example, Plato considered
something dumb or trivial and mistaking it for that technical progress and moral regress
insight are vast. In that connection I am went hand in hand a view also shared by
reminded of the occasion when the great Lucretius who was certain that civilization
Oxford analytical philosopher, J.L. Austin, had at once delivered greater competences . . .
was delivering a major lecture. Sidney and greater corruption (Dodds, 1973). Is
Morgenbesser, the influential American lin- progress necessarily at odds with primitivism
guistic thinker with the blunt wit of Groucho of one shape or another? Is it compatible with
Marx, was in the audience. Austin made the cyclical conceptions of historical change and
observation that while there are many lan- the so-called myth of the Eternal Return? Is
guages in which a double negative makes a progress tied either to teleological inevitability
positive, no case existed where a double pos- or to human achievement? Simply posing
itive conveyed a negative. From the audience these questions exposes the inherent con-
Morgenbesser was heard to murmur dismis- testedness of the idea.
sively Yeah, yeah!1 I have no doubt that audi- If the very nature of progress is a con-
ble or inaudible yeah, yeahs are likely to be tentious issue, it is scarcely surprising that the
expressed at numerous points throughout this genealogy of the idea is no less disputed.
lecture today. Morris Ginsberg reckoned that belief in

David N. Livingstone 561
progress only began to take shape late in the connected and that eventual decadence was
seventeenth century and reached its culmi- inherent in progress. Others have pointed to
nating point . . . towards the end of the nine- the role of disasters in human history.
teenth century (Ginsberg, 1973: 633, 634). Calamities like the Lisbon earthquake of
By contrast, my colleague Peter Bowler 1775, or Auschwitz in the twentieth century,
(1989) speaks of progress as a Victorian are often identified as finally exterminating
invention and anchors it in conceptions of beliefs in the inevitability of progress
pre-Darwinian social evolution, while E.R. (Neiman, 2002). Still others fasten upon a
Dodds (1973: 633) concluded that the earliest litany of tragedies between these two disas-
trace of the idea was detectable at the close ters. J.B. Burys Idea of progress, for example,
of the Greek Archaic Age particularly in the first published in 1920, was a review intended
writings of Xenophanes and that it became as a requiem, brought on by the horrors of the
widespread in the course of the fifth cen- American Civil War, the Paris Commune,
tury. Again, whereas Walter Bagehot could Russian pogroms, and the catastrophe of
confidently assert in 1872 that the Ancients 1914. Robert Nisbets 1980 History of the idea
had no conception of progress, they did not so of progress was no less a history standing in for
much as reject the idea; they did not even an elegy, though in his case the death knell
entertain the idea (Bagehot, 1872: 41), was sounded later yet. Still vital during the
Ludwig Edelstein (1967) found enough evi- first half of the twentieth century, notwith-
dence of its existence to fill a 200-page book standing the sceptical voices of figures like de
with the title The idea of progress in classical Tocqueville, Schopenhauer, and Max Weber,
antiquity. And of course between the tempo- Nisbet attributed widespread disillusion with
ral coordinates of the Ancient and Victorian progress to mid-twentieth century anxieties
worlds, numerous candidates have been can- about economic growth, the depletion of nat-
vassed as fundamental moments in the mak- ural resources, scientific exhaustion, and just
ing of the idea of progress Augustinian plain simple boredom. Concurrently a whole
stadial eschatology; medieval millennialism; suite of philosophers and historians of science
the seventeenth-century triumph of experi- challenged conventional understandings of
ence over authority; Enlightenment philo- the idea of scientific progress by dwelling on
sophy in the various personages of Lessing, the diachronic dimensions of scientific
Adam Smith, Rousseau, Ferguson, Vico, change, highlighting issues of incommensura-
Kant and Condorcet; Comtean positivism; bility, worrying away at problems of refer-
Hegelian idealism; Marxist materialism; ence, and such like (Laudan, 1977). In the
Spencerian evolutionism. The list could be more specific scientific field of evolutionary
extended ad libitum (Ginsberg, 1953; biology, Stephen Gould (1988) attacked the
Passmore, 1970; Bock, 1978; Nisbet, 1980). idea of progress as a noxious, culturally
Given this sense of irresolution, it is not embedded, untestable, nonoperational,
surprising that a raft of different points have intractable idea (see also discussions in Ruse,
likewise been put forward as the moment at 1993; 1996). On the more general conceptual
which progress was supposed to come to an plane the interventions of thinkers with what
end. For some the idea was already in decline are considered to be postmodern inclinations
after the fifth century BC. Thus Aristotles Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and their pred-
disciple Theophrastus tracked the end of ecessors, Nietzsche and Heidegger, are
progress to the discovery of fire which sometimes identified as finally eradicating
brought in its wake both animal and human progress given their dismantling of epistemic
sacrifice, and ultimately war. Some, like foundationalism, their insistence on meaning
Diderot and Montesquieu, supposed that instability, the so-called crisis in representa-
progress and decline were umbilically tion, and their assaults on the notion of the

rational autonomous subject. As Tuvesan 1 Millennial inevitability

(1993: 517) puts it, the profound disillusion- Consider first the following observations from
ment of postmodernism with the grand one of the most influential geography texts
narrative is in considerable part a rejection of ever written:
tyrannical schemes of progress. [I]t is well known that empire has been
Yet, for all the epitaphs that have been travelling from east to west. Probably her last
pronounced over the corpse of progress, and broadest seat will be America. Here the
there are grounds for suspecting that, rather sciences, and the arts of civilized life, are to
receive their highest improvement. Here civil
like Mark Twains quip after hearing that his
and religious liberty are to flourish, unchecked
obituary had been published in the New York by the cruel hand of civil or religious tyranny.
Journal, reports of its death have been greatly Here genius, aided by all the improvements of
exaggerated. In fact the concept of progress, former ages, is to be exerted in humanizing
in one form or another, continues to thrive in mankind in expanding and enriching their
minds with religious and philosophical
different forms in different spaces. Whatever
knowledge, and in planning and executing a
the state of play at the level of grand theory or form of government, which shall involve all the
metaphysical abstraction, the idea of progress excellencies of former governments, with as
has routinely crystallized in particular few of their defects as is consistent with the
settings. And so, erudite and instructive imperfection of human affairs, and which shall
be calculated to protect and unite, in a manner
though these synoptic histories undoubtedly
consistent with the natural rights of mankind,
are, there is, to me, something unsatisfying the largest empire that ever existed. Elevated
about them. They routinely favour the tem- with these prospects, which are not merely
poral and the transcendent over the spatial the visions of fancy, we cannot but antici-
and the contingent, and thereby sacrifice pate the period, as not far distant, when the
AMERICAN EMPIRE will comprehend
particularity to generality. To modulate this
millions of souls, west of the Mississippi . . . The
remorselessly chronological line of attack, God of nature never intended that some of
I want to try to sketch in something of what a the best part of his earth should be inhabited
geography of the idea of progress might by the subjects of a monarch 4000 miles from
look like. them. (Morse, 1792: 469)
The progressive and triumphant settlement
III Progress in geography: moments of the western frontier here projected was
in the historical geography the vision of the American Congregationalist
of an idea clergyman and geographer, Jedidiah Morse,
In order to begin this task, I want to dwell on a whose American geography first came out in
number of significant geographical works 1789, the year the new Constitution of the
which exploited the idea of progress in differ- United States was ratified (Moss, 1995;
ent venues, and endeavour to locate their con- Livingstone, 2005). Immensely popular, it
ceptions of progress in the spaces of their reportedly was only outsold in the early
making. In so doing I hope to contribute to that Republic by the Bible and Websters Speller
growing body of interdisciplinary literature that (Gilmore, 1989; Brckner, 1999), and for
is elucidating what has come to be called the more than 20 years was read, at least in part,
geographies of knowledge. By focusing on geo- by almost every literate American. The sense
graphical knowledge itself I also intend to bring of eschatological progressivism that charac-
a disciplinary self-referential dimension to the terized Morses understanding of the new
conversation by seeking to locate geographical nations destiny also underwrote his justifica-
renditions of progress in their own cultural tion of the American Revolution which was
spaces.2 My quest here, then, is a double couched in the language of expansionist
geography: that is, a geography of ideas of inevitability. God and Nature had conspired
geographical progress. to render revolution as the means by which a

sacred plan for the new United States was location is in the way in which the idea was
disclosed. Thus in elucidating for his readers mobilized.
the rationale for American government, he
insisted that the members of the revolution- 2 Enlightenment rationality
ary Congress, Appealing to the Supreme One of the earliest progress reports on the
Judge of the world for the rectitude of their state of geography, this time from a rather
intentions . . . did . . . solemnly publish and more religiously heterodox source, first
declare, That these united colonies were, and appeared in 1802. This 40-page Memoir on
of right ought to be FREE and INDEPEN- the recent progress, and present state, of
DENT States (Morse, 1792: 68). Hitherto, geography appeared as the introductory
he reflected, the advantages for trade which chapter to John Pinkertons survey Modern
nature [had] so liberally given America had geography a work devoted to describing all
been subverted through British economic pol- the empires, kingdoms, states, and colonies . . .
icy (Morse, 1792: 84); but now, in character- in all parts of the world and to reporting on
istic millenarian voice, he envisaged unlimited progress of the most recent discoveries and
progress in the art of war, in the science of political alterations (Mayhew, 2000). First
government, in philosophy and astronomy, in appearing in two volumes, and in 1807 in an
poetry, and the various liberal arts and sci- expanded three-volume edition of nearly
ences (Morse, 1792: 65). The emergence of 3,000 pages, it was reprinted in various edi-
that distinctively new social being, Homo tions for over 60 years. As a child of the
americanus, which would eradicate all linguis- Enlightenment it is not surprising that
tic, cultural and political distinctions would be Pinkertons conception of progress was part
the direct consequence of an inexorable pro- and parcel of an enlightened discourse of
gressive movement from East to West. To be scientific accuracy, empirical enlargement,
sure, this was an inclusive conception of instrumental practicality, governmentality,
progress, and one that incorporated native and a screaming urge to transcend the past.
peoples who, Morse made clear in his Report No period of time could be more favourable
on Indian affairs (1822: 82), were of one to the appearance of a new system of geogra-
blood, with ourselves; of intellectual powers phy, than the beginning of a new century, he
as strong, and capable of cultivation as ours began, after the elapse of the eighteenth,
and who had scandalously been depicted as which will be memorable in all ages, from the
an inferior race and stripped of their prop- gigantic progress of every science, and in par-
erty . . . for a small part of its real value. And ticular of geographical information
yet it was a notion of progress that ensured (Pinkerton, 1807: I, vi). Consider his opening
the demise of native Indian culture by its remarks:
amalgamation into a generic millennial The progress of geography has begun to
Americanism that flattened out difference by interest all ranks and professions of mankind,
its homogenizing uniformity. and to be apparent even among some nations
For Jedidiah Morse, progress was who have hitherto neglected the sciences.
grounded, as Amy DeRogatis (2003: 133) Notwithstanding the splendour of Strabo,
Pliny, and other great classical writers on this
puts it, in the millenarian view that Gods subject, the science had till lately rather
kingdom would eventually be established on assumed the dry mathematical forms of
Earth and that it would be rooted in Ptolemy; and writers, without talents or
American soil. Here, as elsewhere, selection, had buried in dull pedantry topics
Providentialism was a mainspring of the idea capable of the most seductive amusement, and
the most profound instruction. Justly become
of progress; but its particular manifestation in an indispensable branch of education, it now
the time and space of the Early Republic attracts the attention of the fair pupil, as well
reveals just how significant geographical as of the future statesman, warrior, or

philosopher; and its progress by opening new first, and in greatest depth, to the geography
intercourses, and abating national prejudices of Europe, this distinguished portion of the
and animosities, may be said to contribute in no
small degree to the improvement and
earth: As Europe is the seat of letters and
happiness of the human race. (Pinkerton, 1807: arts, and the greatest exertions of human
I, xxix) energy in every department; and is besides
the native region of the chief modern geogra-
The purpose of Modern geography therefore phers . . . it is always the division first treated
was to expose gross errors in cartography (I, 6). The situation here stood in marked
(I, vi) and replace them with accurate maps contrast to other regions of the globe, some
and charts (I, vii); to depart from the practice of whose inhabitants were destined to be
of blind copying earlier work which was the enslaved. Indeed he found entirely fanatical
means by which an old hallucination becomes the French extension of what he called the
the father of a numerous progeny (I, xii); to wild theory of the rights of man to negroes
reject mere theory which in geography is and snottily quipped that the right of horses
worse than ignorance . . . as it not only neg- may next be discussed; and our race-horses
lects the practical knowledge already be fastened to the plough, while our coach-
acquired, but impedes the progress of discov- horses start for the prize at Newmarket (I,
ery by a false semblance of science (III, 916); 275). The horse analogy, moreover, was not
and to work from the present to the past. simply decorative for Pinkerton was certain
The proper progress is therefore to begin that the differences between Tartars,
with the study of modern geography, he Africans, Americans and Germans were as
insisted, which may afterwards be followed . . . radical as those separating a bull-dog, or
by that of the ancient. The opposite course lap-dog, or shepherds cur, from a pointer
seems almost as ridiculous as it would be to (Pinkerton, 1787: 34).
commence the study of botany by the perusal Such deep divisions, moreover, could be
of Dioscorides, and the Greek and Latin found within Europe too. By the time the
names of plants, without any acquaintance Modern geography appeared, Pinkerton was
with the genuine characteristics and qualities. already well known for his vicious castigation
In general, genius may be cultivated by the of the continents celtic fringe a Celtophobia
study of ancient authors; but the grounds of which expressed itself in his assertion that the
any branch of science are to be sought in Irish, Welsh, and Scottish Highlanders shared
modern precision (I, xii). Accuracy, preci- a fatal moral and intellectual weakness, ren-
sion, utility and improvement were the dering them incapable of susceptibility to the
watchwords of Pinkertons progressivist higher influences of civilization (Pinkerton,
geography. 1787: 17; Withers, 2001: 13031). The Celts,
Underlying this progressivist vision, how- he told his readers, had not yet advanced
ever, though only partly disclosed in this even to a state of barbarism and resembled
work, was a thoroughly racialized conception that of the Hottentots, or others of the rudest
of progress that, when disinterred, helps to races (Pinkerton, 1787: 6768). Just how
explain the architectural structure of the dire that assessment was may be gleaned
European section of Modern geography itself from Pinkertons later description of the peo-
a taxonomy that proceeded by surveying ple of the Congo as entirely void of natural
first what Pinkerton called Principal States, affection, willing to sell their nearest
then Secondary States and finally States of relations for a bottle of brandy and taking
the Third Order. In fact Pinkertons concep- cruel and abominable delight in drinking
tion of progress in geography was profoundly warm blood (Pinkerton, 1807: III, 87374).
connected to his beliefs about racial superior- The message was clear. Certain races were,
ity. Thus he laid out his apologia for turning simply, incapable of any progress at all

(Pinkerton, 1787: 131) and in particular no was shot through with a racialized Scottish
African nation has made any progress Teutonism (see Kidd, 1999) that radically
towards civilization (Pinkerton, 1807: II, ii); compromised the traditional appeal of the
evidently progress, as Silvia Sebastiani cap- Scots Literati to a common human sensibility.
tures it, could not be considered the patri- Of course comparable moves occurred
mony of all humanity (Sebastiani, 2003: 11). elsewhere in Enlightenment Europe. Kants
Given these circumstances, Pinkerton was anthropological universalism, we now know,
certain that there were global spaces where was vitiated by his remarks on the intrinsic
progress could only occur through migration, shortcomings of the tropical world (see
conquest, and occupation. At bottom, the Harvey, 2000; Livingstone, 2002) as was
history of progress to Pinkerton just was Humes cosmopolitan humanism by that infa-
the history of colonization, and volume 3 of the mous footnote on the supposed natural inferi-
Modern geography surveyed what he ority of blacks and in his valorizing of the
described as unconquered countries. It is temperate zone (Popkin, 197778). Besides,
therefore no surprise that his account of the conceptions of how enlightened progress was
historical geography of England took as its to be achieved, and what were taken to be its
point of departure the subjugation of the exclusions, were anything but uniform.
Celts by the Goths; in his description of While Pinkerton pinned progress to invading
Ireland the accumulation of Celtic tribes there civilization cosmopolitanism through
was attributed to the progress of the German conquest the French advocate of stadial his-
Goths (Pinkerton, 1807: I, 213). In Africa, the tory, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, protested
experience of many successions of inhabi- against the domination of one people by
tants was the key to distinguishing the supe- another (Kohn, 1956: 229; Conversi, 2000).
rior North Africans from their sub-Saharan Repudiating alike colonialism and environ-
counterparts whose features were indige- mentalism la Montesquieu, Turgot believed
nous and peculiar and differentiated them that all nations passed through four stages of
from all the others races of mankind (III, human progress, even if they did so at differ-
804). As for the wrongs of native Africans, ent rates. Indeed, as Mike Heffernan has
these could only be resolved by a powerful shown, for Turgot, the globes variegated
European colony which Pinkerton deemed geography bore witness to the historical
the sole way to raise a degraded continent to stages which various peoples had attained:
its due rank in the civilized world. (III, 916). Todays geography is simply tomorrows his-
Until that could be achieved, however, Africa tory (Heffernan, 1999: 131). While there
could best serve as an object lesson for might for the time being be regional differ-
European self-congratulation: if we cannot ences in the rate at which the ladder of
diffuse civilization, and the blessing of stable progress was ascended, the darker places
and subordinate society, we may at least, by would ultimately arrive at the same level of
comparison, learn duly to prize their advan- enlightenment and civilization (Heffernan,
tages (III, 925). 1999: 134). So, even if it is the case that the
Plainly, as J.G.A. Pocock (1999: 316) very idea of Enlightenment progress was
observes, the application of a stadial theory predicated on the construction of a set of
of history brought Enlightenment Scots alterities backwardness, barbarism and
to the view that the progress of society primitivism and that these, as Jacques
and le progress de lesprit humain did not argues (1997), were energetically projected
happen in the same way in all parts of the onto Africans and native Americans, it would
globe. The Enlightenment rationality from be mistaken to assume that Enlightenment
which Pinkertons conception of progress in advocates of stadial theories always
geography in every sense was assembled, conceived of progress the same way, as the

contrast between Turgot and Pinkerton point- Geographical Society for work arising from
edly reveals. The European Enlightenment and his five-year Siberian expedition and author of
its rendition of progress disclosed their own both political tracts and Investigations of the
distinctive geographies (Livingstone and Ice Age (1876) had begun to express himself
Withers, 1999). on Darwins theory of evolution. Thus in his
1882 article on Charles Darwin for the anar-
3 Evolutionary directionalism chist weekly Le Rvolt, of which he himself
Another time, another setting, and a was editor, Kropotkin sought to recruit
markedly different conception of progressive Darwin for his own political purposes and
geography: thereby to release him from the grip of bour-
Geography . . . must teach us, from our earliest geois attempts to mobilize the struggle for
childhood, that we are all brethren, whatever existence against socialism. Far from excus-
our nationality. In our time of wars, of national ing exploitation, Kropotkin insisted, . . . the
self-conceit, of national jealousies and hatreds investigations of Darwin and his successors
nourished by people who pursue their own comprise, on the contrary, an excellent argu-
egoistic, personal or class interests, geography
must be . . . a means of dissipating these ment to the effect that animal societies are
prejudices and of creating feelings more best organized in the communist-anarchist
worthy of humanity. It must show that each manner. To achieve this enlistment of
nationality brings its own precious building- Darwin, however, required a radical reinter-
stone for the general development of the pretation of the character of interspecific
commonwealth, and that only small parts of
each nation are interested in maintaining struggle in the Darwinian schema and a
national hatreds and jealousies. It must be reworking of evolutionary directionalism to
recognized that, apart from other causes mean that it was sociable species, where all
which nourish national jealousies, different the individuals live in solidarity with one
nationalities do not yet sufficiently know one another, that prosper, develop and reproduce . . .
another.
Solidarity and joint labour that is what sup-
In this vision, geography was allocated the task ports species in the struggle to maintain their
of showing that mere short-sighted egotism existence against the hostile forces of nature
was at the bottom of all wars; that political (Kropotkin, 1882: 1).
frontiers are the relics of a barbarous past; that This rendition of evolutionary theory with
the prejudices in which we are reared with its celebration of mutuality, cooperation, and
regard to the so-called lower races must be sociability became for Kropotkin the very
dissipated; that so-called savages have gauge of progress both in the biological and
understood how to develop highly in their soci- the social realm. Progressive movement
eties the same humane sociable feelings which towards benevolent consociation was, at
we Europeans are so proud to profess, but so once, an evolutionary achievement and a
seldom practise (Kropotkin, 1885). political ambition. Thus in a sequence of arti-
The author, of course, was the Russian cles for The Nineteenth Century in the early
migr and anarchistic humanist Peter 1890s written in response to T.H. Huxleys
Kropotkin, who laid out this vision of What atrocious article on The struggle for exis-
geography ought to be in 1885. This pronun- tence in human society (1888) and which
ciamento, however, cannot be understood in were drawn together into his 1902 Mutual
isolation from the natural science foundations aid Kropotkin developed the evolutionary
in which it was grounded and the concept of foundationalism of his natural history in what
evolutionary progress that sustained it. Three he called its wide Darwinian sense:
years prior to the appearance of his geograph- The animal species, in which individual struggle
ical manifesto, Kropotkin already recipient has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and
of the gold medal of the Imperial Russian the practice of mutual aid has attained the

greatest development, are invariably the most of the London School of Economics wryly
numerous, the most prosperous, and the most quipped in his prefatory remarks, A sneer
open to further progress. The mutual
protection which is obtained in this case, the
from The Times is an excellent recommenda-
possibility of attaining old age and of tion for anybody. It was a different story in
accumulating experience, the higher Russia where the Malthusian dimensions of
intellectual development, and the further Darwins theory had long been abominated.
growth of sociable habits, secure the To the St Petersburg naturalists among
maintenance of the species, its extension, and
its further progressive evolution. The
them Kropotkin himself Malthusian
unsociable species, on the contrary, are demographics and its atomistic conception of
doomed to decay. (Kropotkin, 1939: 230) society were viewed as the product of a cold,
soulless English political economy. Indeed
In the human sphere, Kropotkin outlined the Kropotkin openly acknowledged that he was
ways in which mutual aid manifested itself following in the footsteps of the Russian
among what he called savages and barbar- mutual aid tradition whose genesis could be
ians (deploying the conventional anthropo- tracked back to Karl F. Kessler who had enun-
logical vocabulary of his time), in the medieval ciated his law of mutual aid in an 1879
city and in his own day. This inquiry brought speech to the St Petersburg Society of
him to the conclusion that [i]n the practice of Naturalists drawing on his research on the
mutual aid, which we can trace to the earliest ichthyology of the Aralo-Caspian region and
beginnings of evolution, we thus find the pos- supplementing it with supporting evidence
itive and undoubted origin of our ethical con- from the more general natural history of the
ceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical Crimea. This tradition, as it was subsequently
progress of man, mutual support not mutual developed by figures like A.F. Brandt and
struggle has had the leading part. In its wide M.M. Filippov, built on the earlier rejection of
extension, even at the present time, we also Malthus by the Russian economists of the
see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolu- 1840s, 50s and 60s (Todes, 1989). This was
tion of our race (Kropotkin, 1939: 234). the intellectual space in which Kropotkins
The political ramifications of this biological evolutionary progressivism and its geographi-
credo for social progress were obvious, and he cal correlates were domiciled. What further
spelled them out directly in his 1910 entry on grounded Kropotkins enthusiasm for this
Anarchism for the Encyclopedia Britannica: Malthus-denying version of Darwinism was
True progress lies in the direction of decen- his own first-hand experience of the Siberian
tralization, both territorial and functional, in wilderness where, in the Vitim region, he
the development of the spirit of local and per- engaged in zoogeographical inquiries with
sonal initiative, and of free federation from Polyakoff. We saw plenty of adaptations for
the simple to the compound, in lieu of the struggling very often in common, against the
present hierarchy from the centre to the diverse circumstances of climate he recalled,
periphery (Kropotkin, 1910). . . . and Polyakoff wrote many a good page
Kropotkin put the finishing touches to upon the mutual dependency of carnivores,
Mutual aid in Bromley, Kent, during 1902. But ruminants, and rodents in their geographical
the principles of evolutionary cooperation distribution; we witnessed numbers of facts
that provided naturalistic justification for his of mutual support, especially during the
anarchistic humanism and progressivist geog- migrations of birds and ruminants; but even in
raphy alike were fundamentally the product the Amur and Usuri regions, where animal life
of his Russian environment. Indeed his ideas swarms in abundance, facts of real competi-
did not travel well in Britain and the first edition and struggle between higher animals of
tion was not universally welcomed, as the the same species came very seldom under my
editor of the Penguin 1939 version H.L. Beales notice, though I eagerly searched for them.

The same impression appears in the work of placing increasing strains on workers who
most Russian zoologists, and it probably attempt to keep abreast of developments over
more than a very narrow front. . . . Progress in
explains why Kesslers ideas were so wel- Geography has been instituted with this
comed by the Russian Darwinists, while like informational crisis as its central concern. Its
ideas are not in vogue amidst the followers of aims are to present regular, scholarly reviews
Darwin in Western Europe (Kropotkin, 1939: of current developments within all branches of
2627). the field . . . In short, the editorial objectives are
to provide informed and informative reports
Pause now momentarily. For Jedidiah and evaluations of whatever active research is
Morse progress was grounded in an going on within the whole field of geography.
Americanized providentialist teleology; for
John Pinkerton it was wedded to a Scottish Although the assumption underlying these
Enlightenment rationalism that valorized observations was simply that progress
colonial occupation as the engine power of amounted to information intensification,
progressive cosmopolitanism. To Peter there was something of a reluctance to speak
Kropotkin the idea of progress was under- of progress very much at all. The articles
girded by an unorthodox Russian Darwinism that constituted the first issue reviewed
that read the politics of mutual support into developments in various fields data analysis,
evolution, and then extracted a philosophy of environmental perception, voting decision
progressive sociability from it. behaviour, diffusion studies, climatic geomor-
phology; but the language of progress per se
4 Information management was conspicuous only by its absence.
Yet another understanding of the nature of Nevertheless a number of surrogates persist-
geographical progress appeared in 1969. In ently asserted themselves. In Peter Goulds
the introduction to the recently established report on methodological developments, for
serial, Progress in Geography, its editors example, a range of concepts routinely sur-
Christopher Board, Richard Chorley, Peter faced as stand-ins for what progress might be
Haggett and David Stoddart presented their taken to mean. Invariably these rotated
apologia for the new journal simply as a nec- around such notions as precision, accuracy,
essary response to the publishing avalanche efficiency and related mensural matters. Thus
that even then was afflicting scholarship. he reported on methods of securing more
Progress in these terms was very largely accurate and effective cartographic repre-
informational intensity and the journal sentation of data (Gould, 1969: 7), spatially
Progress in Geography a means for navigating relevant extensions of mathematics (p. 9),
the discipline through the resulting data and the growing ability to model complex
oceans. relationships in geographic space (p. 21);
moves towards greater precision (p. 9),
Events of recent years have conspired to
produce an ever-rising and widening flood of more efficient descriptions (p. 12), and
geographical publication. . . . The explosion of increasingly effective scaling analysis (p. 14)
the geographical data matrix, the increasing were equally deemed worthy of review. From
popularity and relevance of geographical time to time the specifically geographical ani-
studies, their widening scope and their
mus driving these concerns sprang into focus:
deepening analytical sophistication have been
the causes of this upsurge. . . . The quantity of it was to identify inefficient human spatial
scientific literature is believed to double about behaviour (p. 17), to specify optimal location
every fifteen years, and there seems no reason (p. 18) and to facilitate the integration of data
to suppose that geographical literature is collections systems (p. 7). Other contribu-
exceptional. While this incessant, logarithmic,
tors operated with similar, if less consistently
if often obscure growth of geographical
research is a welcome and long-overdue sign of expressed, preconceptions. Harold Brookfield,
intellectual vigour within the subject, it is also for instance, acknowledging that we face

measurement problems of a major order in Chorleys History of Geomorphology had

coping with distortion, discontinuity and vari- already appeared in 1964, and David Stoddart
ability, identified as a major task the need to (1966) was writing brilliantly about Darwins
compare what he called ground truth with impact on geography during the very years of
the perceived environment in terms of PIGs (as he loved to dub it) gestation.3
accuracy of representation (Brookfield, So, why the confident title Progress and
1969: 67). Kevin Cox (1969: 96) assessed the its at best half-hearted articulation? The edi-
value of a nodal communication systems tors certainly debated the name at the time,
model to understanding voting behaviour in floating the suggestion that it might be called
terms of the degree to which it can be made Advances in Geography. Perhaps the self-
operational within the constraints of accuracy assured label reflected the fact that the very
and economy, while David Stoddart (1969: idea for the journal went back to a series of
212) criticized various schemes of climatic summer-schools for high-school teachers
geomorphology on the grounds that they beginning in July 1963 at Cambridges
failed to satisfy the requirements of rigorous Madingley Hall, the contents of which
induction and thereby demonstrated the resulted in the hugely successful Methuen
unsound procedure of preserving undue publications Frontiers in geographical teaching
rigidity ultimately lapsing into non-empiricism. (1965) and Models in geography (1967). Both
All of this was entirely in keeping, of course, had the air of bringing the newest geographi-
with the insignia under which quantitative cal insights to a wider audience. Any diffi-
geography traded its wares and assembled dence reflected the editors scientific
what Trevor Barnes (2004), following sensibilities and the debates around 1960s
Foucault and Gieryn, calls its heterotopic Cambridge about conceptions of progress in
sites and truth spots calculating machines, science. As Peter Haggett explains:
mimeographed departmental discussion The title Progress doesnt mean that we were
papers, self-assured objectivity, mathematical unaware that the whole concept of progress
vernacular. was a complex and disputed one. After all Dick
Yet, while scientific rigour, technical refine- [Chorley] devoted 40 years of his life [to]
ment and metrological exactitude all implicitly wrestling with the history of geomorphology,
and no one studying the changing views of the
served as proxies for the journals operational Earth over the centuries from Aristotle on
sense of progress, contributors were could be mislead into thinking it was an
strangely silent on the idea of progress itself. irresistible march towards the promised land . . .
The reasons for this are doubtless myriad. He rejected both the optimistic (linear) view
But one explanation may well lie in the con- and the pessimistic (circular) view. These were
days in which helical structures ( la Crick and
text in which the journal was conceived and Watson) were very much whistling around in
the personnel involved in bringing it to birth. the Cambridge academic ether, and we sensed
The original gang of four were all deeply that progress if it is to be made was a slow,
committed to the unity of geography and it winding around road with hair pins aplenty and
was not until some eight years later in 1977 abundant opportunities for sudden snakes as
well as ladders along the way.
that Progress in Geography bifurcated into
physical and human streams. The fact that all In fact, things were even worse than that for
the editors had substantial interests in science the idea of progress in 1969. A profound sense
of one shape or another is not coincidental I of cultural unease, not least given the dark
think. Peter Haggetts pioneering Locational side of instrumental science, was already bit-
analysis, for example, came out in 1965. ing deeply. Within two years of the appear-
Moreover between them they possessed a ance of Progress in Geography, the molecular
considerable awareness of the history of sci- biologist Gunther Stent was expressing the
entific thinking the first volume of Dick view that further significant advances in

science were less and less likely (Stent, 1971) typified related ventures such as the sequence
and this at the height of a counterculture of volumes on Geography and the urban envi-
movement that Theodore Roszak (1969) was ronment: progress in research and applications
already depicting as undermining the self- edited by David Herbert and Ron Johnston,
satisfactions of a technological society whose and the series on progress in various species
philosophy of if-it-can-be-done, it-must-be- of adjectival geography urban, medical,
done had already delivered too many dire industrial, political edited by Michael
consequences. Roszaks analysis of what he Pacione. Thus in the first chapter of the inau-
called the myth of objective consciousness, gural volume of their series, Herbert and
moreover, drew sustenance from Thomas Johnston (1978: 29) told readers that authors
Kuhns now seven-year old Structure of scien- would present overviews of large pro-
tific revolutions (1962) which, Roszak grammes of research and would review par-
observed, had thrown strong and significant ticular types of research, though they did
doubt on [the] incremental conception of note that it was in philosophical and method-
the history of science and came close to sug- ological debates that true progress is often
gesting that the progressive accumulation of made.
truth in the scientific community is some-
thing of an illusion (Roszak, 1969: 213). 5 Moral sensibility
Writing of this turn of events in his 1980 Given the scepticism about scientific objectiv-
History of the idea of progress, Robert Nisbet ity that has shaken confidence in the notion of
evidently lamenting the decline of the cognitive progress and chastened many of its
doctrine pointedly contrasted the objec- devoted enthusiasts, it might seem surprising
tivist social science of the 1950s and 60s and that in his Progress in Human Geography lec-
its yearning to become as much like physical ture for 2000 David Smith elected to address
[science] as possible, with the situation in his the issue of moral progress. With subjectivism
own day where what he termed the new garnering disciples in the scientific realm, it
breed of social scientists had retreated into a seemed strange to hold out hope for progress
sceptical subjectivism given to denouncing in the moral sphere given the fundamental
objectivity as mere delusion (Nisbet, 1980: questions that have long been raised over the
347). Read in this context, Progress in notion of moral objectivity. Smith was fully
Geography came to birth at precisely the aware of these currents and noting that the
moment when the lingering hopes for a pro- notion of progress has become deeply prob-
gressive social science were fragmenting in lematic he nonetheless wryly added:
the face of challenges both within the acad-
Nevertheless, it is a mistake to dismiss any
emy and beyond. There was too the troubling notion of progress as enlightenment error.
quip that Jacques Barzun threw into the ring While the affluent endure postmodern
in 1968 on taking the temperature of the ambiguity and uncertainty in comfort, for
American University: Valuing knowledge, we those at the coal-face of human misery what
constitutes progress is still likely to be self-
preposterise the idea and say, everybody
evident. (Smith, 2000: 2)
shall produce written research in order to live,
and it shall be decreed a knowledge explo- These sentiments, and the passion with
sion. (Barzun, 1968: 221). How those words which they were expressed, were in fact the
have come home to roost! product of the authors experiences in a differ-
Whatever the reasons, progress was, to ent time and different place: early 1970s
all intents and purposes, metamorphosed into South Africa. As Smith reflected, he had
review and that transmutation has contin- been arguing a quarter of a century earlier
ued to characterize the journals latterday from his standpoint in Johannesburg, that
successors. Indeed that self-same conception genuine progress in geography involved

exposing spatial malfunctionings and injus- moralistic surveillance which drew in part on
tices, contributing to the design of a spatial Foucaults insights about the spatiality of both
order of society in which people can be really rational and moral regimes of truth and power
free to fulfil themselves in a secure social set- (Driver, 1988). In similar vein, the way was
ting where the rights of all are respected paved by Chris Philos appeal for reconnecting
(Smith, 1973: 121). For Smith the obligations geography to moral philosophy, calling on
that conditions of apartheid in South Africa geographys roots in Kantianism. Kant had
laid on the subject and its practitioners were indeed identified what he called moral geog-
such as to invite moral certainty. Indeed raphy as one of the constituent elements of
those conditions, in tandem with the need to physical geography in order to bring inquiries
struggle against such obscenities as ethnic into the mores and customs of different peo-
cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and mass ples within the scope of the subject (May,
starvation in central Africa, were quite simply 1970). Writing some 15 years ago, Philo
as close to moral truths as can be imagined, believed he could detect signs marking the ini-
and those who deny them are wrong (Smith, tiation of a more moral lens on the human
2000: 2). The strength of Smiths plea, in geography of the world than has been present
part, lay in its appeal to gut instinct (what we before (Philo, 1991: 17). In these pronounce-
might more philosophically term moral intu- ments, I think, matters of normative morality
itionism) and to the sense that we dont need were not the quarry, and indeed Philo himself
some foundational propositions from which to believed that such inquiries will take us
infer our intuitive recognition that as Smith towards the moral relativists (Philo, 1991:
quoted the Cornell moral philosopher Richard 16). But other more objectivist approaches to
Miller no one earns the right to be born to moral progress were being advanced. Thus, in
a family living in a spacious house in Armonk, 1997, Bob Sack devoted considerable space
New York, rather than on a straw mat in the to transcendental ethical virtue in his elucida-
slums of Calcutta. Yet the enormous differ- tion of what he termed Homo geographicus a
ences at these starts include enormous differ- work in which the moral dimensions of place
ences in life prospects (Miller, 1992: 298). and their intimate connections with truth and
In the intervening years Smith worked justice were fore-grounded. The following
tirelessly to advance welfare geography and year Jim Proctor (1998) called geographers
was at the forefront of projects to bring geo- attention to the need for greater considera-
graphical scholarship and practice within the tion of normative ethics and metaethics.
arc of ethical consciousness. My aim is not to Again, in 2002, in a collection of essays under
review that trajectory here. It is rather to the general title Progress, several geographers
remark on the notable resurgence of interest umbilically connected that concept with
in questions of moral progress at precisely the issues of moral sensibility. Tuan (2002: 86),
time moment when, at least in some circles, for example, insisted that Progress is ulti-
the very notion of epistemic progress had frag- mately fatuous or empty unless it contributes
mented. To put it another way, even while to moral . . . awareness; Entrikin (2002)
scepticism about natural knowledge where linked ideals of moral perfectibility with the
that label has any realist as opposed to simply notion of democratic place-making; and Sack
conventionalist locution was gripping cer- reiterated his earlier (1999) conception of
tain sections of the geographical academy, intrinsic geographical progress as movement
voices affirming moral knowledge were towards the good and the eschewal of three
clearly being heard. types of geographical evil: autarky, tyranny
In some part, I think, these renewed stir- and chaos (Sack, 2002: 123). Indeed, how-
rings owed something to earlier challenging ever politically chancy it may be, an ethically
work on the empirical manifestations of robust language of evil has reasserted itself

among some of those advocating moral driven philosophical reflection. In our own
retrieval. Paul Cloke, for example, holding out discipline, being brought face to face with
optimism for moral progress, has urged us to malevolent realities, I think, has been enough
sponsor imaginations of power that recog- to coax many towards a more morally vigor-
nize evil in various forms (Cloke, 2004: 221) ous lexicon, and to allow moral outrage to
in the same volume in which David Smith burst through epistemic good manners. Mere
depicts professional geography as a funda- measurement has not been enough. Attend
mentally normative project (2004: 197). Bob to Neiman:
Sack (2003) continues to use the vocabulary Many people yearn for measures of absolute
of evil in depicting certain places and behav- weight. But what would be helped by putting
iours. In his critique of what he takes to be the genocide at Auschwitz at 1.0 on a scale
abstracted cosmopolitanisms that float above that left genocide in Cambodia at 0.87 or the
other way around? It doesnt take much more
the messiness of location, David Harvey
than naming such yearnings to point out their
(2000) consciously echoes the language of hollowness. Comparing genocides, or natural
Hannah Arendt in order to speak of the disasters, makes sense only with regard to
banality of geographical evils, to warn of the particular goals: preferably, preventing future
explosively evil consequences of cosmopoli- ones. Once we are facing evils, trying to
measure them is a matter of abstraction at
tanism bereft of geographical specificity, and
best, political calculation at worst . . . Given the
to castigate the amoral order of capitalist difficulties of using the word responsibly, its
power (Harvey, 2000: 557, 558). From the easy to understand the urge to give up talk of
same political address Neil Smith has por- evil altogether were it not for the fact that
trayed what he terms the cruelly satanic we have moral needs, and one of them is calling
things by their proper names. It isnt false to call
geographies of globalization, however
a mass murder bad, but if nothing more occurs
rhetorically risky he acknowledges such to you when faced with a pile of corpses you
vocabulary to be (Smith, 1997). have seen as much, and as little, as a man who
Just why this state of affairs has come calls a Vermeer painting pretty. (Neiman,
about in the very midst of a burgeoning scep- 2002: xi, xv)
ticism about knowledge claims tout court, is The sheer there-ness of evil in our world has
worthy of further reflection of course. But I forced what might be called our moral geog-
dont think I can provide any compelling raphers to recall our attention to geography
explanation here. All I will say is that I find as moral scholarship and to engage in ethically
persuasive the sorts of argument recently muscular language whatever the epistemic
advanced by Susan Neiman, Director of the pressures towards relativism (see, for
Einstein Forum in Potsdam, in her arresting instance, Kobayashi and Proctor, 2004).
alternative history of western philosophy. In Whether it was the located experience of
her telling that tradition has, in a profound apartheid in South Africa or homelessness on
way, constituted a vast argument over the the streets of Bristol, facing these injustices
issue of evil in our world a narrative that has has, at least for some, placed geography
been either sidelined or suppressed in stan- squarely in the sphere of moral engagement.
dard accounts that privilege debates between For such, progress in geography is moral
say rationalists and empiricists, or realists progress.
and idealists. But these histories, in Neimans
telling, have delivered a shallow storyline, a IV Retrieving progress without
mere shadow of the horrible realities from progressivism
the devastating Lisbon earthquake in 1775 In each of the cases I have just sketched, the
(which called forth three essays on the nature general foundations grounding progress
of earthquakes by Immanuel Kant) to mass eschatological inevitability, enlightenment
murder in Auschwitz that in fact have rationality, evolutionary directionalism,

information management, moral indignation of that ideology are forceful and there can be
were modulated by the spaces in which these no return to the casual optimism of those like
writers worked. And of course in other tem- Charles Murray (2001) of the American
poral and spatial locations other stabilizing Enterprise Institute who too readily sign up to
fixtures could be excavated. Imperial com- the idea that history has a direction, the idea
pulsion, military imperative, emancipatory that human action has been, and is, making
governance, technological mastery are candi- the world a better place. Nor am I advocat-
dates that readily spring to mind as enterprises ing either the institutionalized accountability
against which progress in geography has been that purports to ensure progress through con-
gauged. In our own time, I think David Ley formity to regulatory protocols and perform-
(2003: 547) is not far off the mark when he ance targets what Michael Power (1999)
observes that: progress has become equated calls rituals of verification, or the shallow
with a commitment to innovation. The very progress-measuring arithmetic of the sort
idea of progress in geography is identified with advocated by those social scientists who
the modernist shock of the new. Now it trade in the depreciated currency of desocial-
would not be difficult to mobilize such cases ized human subjects and pseudo-scientific
to reject the idea of progress as nothing objectivity. As Onora ONeill (2002) point-
but self-interest writ large and to consider edly noted in her Reith Lectures, our audit
the project of elucidating geographies of the culture actually stands in the way of the very
idea of progress as merely an exercise in progress it professes to measure and breeds a
deconstruction. cynicism that undercuts the public trust that
I believe that conclusion to be mistaken, regulation is supposed to foster. Mary
however. It is itself a mark of progress, I Douglas and Steven Ney (1998), too, suspi-
believe, to see the error of confusing the cious of precisely the species of progressivism
American way with the ways of heaven as that assumes that human worth and happi-
Morse did, or to deny the possibility of ness can be reduced to calculable economics,
progress to whole zones of the globe on the contend that such outlooks persistently turn a
grounds of an ugly even if enlightened blind eye to an abundance of anthropological
racial prejudice as Pinkerton did, or to evidence disclosing people who, without the
carve up Darwinian naturalism as Russian blessings of modern gadgetry, all-the-while
evolutionists did to make it fit with their enjoy short working hours, good company,
prior ideological preferences. Identifying the and stimulating conversations ranging from
sectional interests that are displayed here is farce to philosophy. Not bad. And all without
surely to hold out hope for something better. the trappings of the material West. As
It is an indication of progress to realize that Marshall Sahlins (1974: 1314) once tellingly
thinking of moral accountability in the lan- put it: We are inclined to think of hunters and
guage of the calculus does not provide us gatherers as poor because they dont have
with enough moral depth. Of course this is anything; perhaps better to think of them for
not to despatialize our own notions of that reason as free. Having said that, it is
progress; we are every bit as located as our surely still possible to work with a chastened
predecessors. But that surely does not mean notion of progress which at least allows us to
that the idea of progress, albeit of a partial recognize that that while few people in the
and localized variety, is either incoherent or West under the age of 40 now hardly know
misconceived. what toothache is, a century ago most people
Now let me be clear about this. In seeking lived with it for about half their lives. So let
to retrieve the idea of the possibility of me share a few thoughts on ways in which a
progress, I do not propose rehabilitating responsible conception of progress may still
Progressivism with a capital P. The critiques be salvaged.

1 Progress as a regulative ideal get into the wrong hands the hands of
I think there is much to be said for the idea extremists, fanatics, militants and foster dis-
that progress is, and rightly is, a regulative trust in the certainties that deconstructionists
ideal. We aim to make progress whether or routinely take for granted. When you hear of
not we achieve it. Now I am fully aware of religious fundamentalists in the American
the Derridian-inspired scepticism about regu- South welcoming social constructivism in sci-
lative ideals on the grounds of their supposed ence as a means of subverting evolutionary
domestication of future otherness to present biology, or of the National Security Agency
horizons (Reynolds, 2004). But in my view, co-opting the knowledge/power synthesis, it
deflationary attitudes towards aims to under- makes you wonder. But that in itself would be
stand things better, to find out truths about a shallow response to Latours diagnostic
matters, to improve conditions, to put in place which pinpoints with remarkable clarity the
better states of affairs even as coherent prevalent condition of what he calls critical
aspirations or goals to revere and live by are barbarity, a state where:
both bizarre and dangerous.
you can be at once and without sensing any
This unease, I think, is now being regis-
contradiction (1) an anti-fetishist for everything
tered by some of those most associated with you dont believe in religion, popular culture,
criticism but who have a sense that we are art, politics; (2) an unrepentant positivist for all
now sated with a glut of High Theory. Terry you believe in sociology, economics, genetics,
Eagletons plea in After theory for the recov- evolutionary psychology, semiotics; and (3) a
perfectly healthy realist for what you really
ery of some sense of the normative is a case in cherish and, of course, it might be criticism
point. As he puts it: It is a mistake . . . to itself. (Latour, 2004: 19)
believe that norms are always restrictive . . .
Only an intellectual who has overdosed on At a fundamental level, this turns out to be a
abstraction could be dim enough to imagine moral concern. For as Latour works towards
that whatever bends a norm is politically rad- a concluding refrain he makes the following
ical (Eagleton, 2004: 15). But let me dwell appeal: The critic is not the one who debunks
briefly on Bruno Latours essay for Harpers but the one who assembles, not the one who
Magazine (2004) entitled The Last Critique lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naive
a piece carrying more question marks per believers but the one who offers arenas in
square inch than I believe Ive ever seen which to gather. The critic . . . is the one for
before in print. Stimulated in part by those whom, if something is constructed, then it
exploiting deconstructivist critique to sustain means it is fragile and thus in great need of
scepticism about matters like global warming, care (Latour, 2004: 20).
Latour clearly thinks that the fashion for total It is for this reason then that, however
unmasking has gone way too far. He con- sympathetic we might be to David Harveys
fesses: Id like to believe that . . . I intended to (in my view only partly persuasive) geograph-
emancipate the public from prematurely natu- ical corrective to the kind of optimistic cos-
ralized objectified facts. But was I mistaken? . . . mopolitan aspirations put forward by Martha
Perhaps the danger no longer stems from an Nussbaum, and however compromised we
excessive confidence in ideological arguments may believe Kants universalism and Perpetual
posturing as matters of fact which we have peace were by the shortcomings of his geog-
learned to combat so efficiently but from an raphy, with all its grotesque racial caricatures,
excessive distrust of good matters of fact dis- I myself think we would do well to attend to
guised as bad ideological biases (Latour, Nussbaums Kantian-inspired hopes for a
2004: 15). A cynic reading this might wonder local and piecemeal sort of progress even
if such concerns are a knee-jerk reaction to though they are not clearly supported by
the realization that critique can all too easily what we can observe (Nussbaum, 1997: 24).

As Kant himself put it: [H]owever uncertain breath that much of this book can be read in
I may be and may remain as to whether we the mode of old-fashioned historical realism
can hope for anything better for mankind, this (Shapin, 1994: xv). The irony of course is
uncertainty cannot detract from the maxim I that, in order to expose just how truth was
have adopted, or from the necessity of constructed through social regimes of civility
assuming for practical purposes that human in seventeenth-century England, he had to
progress is possible. This hope for better times exempt his own account from the self-same
to come, without which an earnest desire to structural operations. I am not complaining
do something useful for the common good about this, of course, for in my view he
would never have inspired the human heart, provided a truer account of how knowledge
has always influenced the activities of right- was made during the co-called Scientific
thinking people (quoted in Nussbaum, 1997: Revolution than we have had before. The
24). So let me, in conclusion, mention two or book constituted a significant moment of
three ways in which I believe the idea of progress in our understanding of the history of
progress, if only as an aspirational entity a epistemic warrant and of what has passed for
regulative principle should be retained. truth. But if we cant read his own story as an
aspiration towards a truer account of the
2 Progress as an epistemic possibility making of knowledge then, as Williams says
If Richard Rorty is to be believed, 500 years of of Rorty, the whole project would be running
epistemological struggle have failed to deliver on empty (Williams, 2002: 59).
any sure-shot formula for warranting knowl- Second, to hold out hope for making epis-
edge classically understood as true and justified temic progress is emphatically not to appeal
belief. Accordingly, Rorty urges us to begin for a return to a precritical age. It is to look for
new conversations liberated from the aggres- some via media between what Susan Haack
sively epistemic obsessions of the dominant in her Manifesto of a passionate moderate
Western philosophical tradition (Rorty, 1998). I (1998) dubs the Old Deferentialism (with its
certainly agree that there should be a widening excessive optimism and confidence in ration-
of the conversation about knowledge as true alism) and the New Cynicism (with its exces-
and jusitified belief, but I think we will lose out sive pessimism and love for sneer quotes).
if we ignore the epistemic altogether and sim- Haack of course is already well-practised at
ply engage in different talk for its own sake. cultivating mediating positions not least
Two things need saying here, I think. with her well-known synthesis of foundation-
First, to retain the aspiration of making alism and coherentism called foundheren-
progress in finding out about the world is not tism; and while I am not sure I would map
to adopt any particular theory of knowledge. the path just where she does frankly a tad
In my view Bernard Williams (2002: 61) is too close to the domain of what she herself
quite right to distinguish between truth and calls confessions of an old fashioned prig I
histories of the concept of truth which typi- do nevertheless sense the need to steer some
cally describe conceptions, varying over path between nave realism and what she
time, of belief formation, or of knowledge . . . labels Vulgar Rortyism. Surely she is right to
Often they are philosophical theories of the say that it is a false dichotomy to think of sci-
truth. To conclude from these histories that entific knowledge as either completely inde-
there is no such thing as progress towards the pendent of internal organization and external
truth about some state of affairs is to make a context or a mere social construction.
category mistake. Indeed it is rather ironic One thing seems sure: if we give up the
that in his wonderful and in my view won- desire of making progress towards the truth,
derfully mistitled A social history of truth, worse, if we consider the virtue of truth-telling
Steven Shapin confesses in virtually his first as a veiled form of tyranny, the study of human

geography is likely and here I paraphrase worth than dark ones, and that the colonial
Bernard Williams to slide from professional subordination of most of the world stood in
seriousness, through mere professionalization, direct contradiction to the ideals of the West.
to a finally disenchanted careerism (Williams, Few intelligent people now question these
2002: 3). assumptions, even if the realities lag behind
liberal ideals (Drayton, 2000: 274).
3 Progress as an ethical aspiration If identifying such achievements allows us
In the moral sphere, progress, I believe, is both to retrieve the idea of progress, itemizing
an aspiration and an achievement. By this I do these successes only serves to remind us of
not mean that there has been some inevitable the distance we have yet to travel. But that
and universal ethical improvement. No. It is recognition is itself an acknowledgement that
rather that in certain times and places some striving for moral progress is worthwhile.
moral progress has been attained and that What path we ought to take in trying to
should not pass us by. Neiman puts it well: achieve this is not always clear. But, in my
Its . . . important that we pause to wonder at
view, it is bound up, at least in part, with the
other developments: how little time has passed deepening of our awareness of what mutual
since public execution by torture, and the sale recognition entails and the obligations that we
of men and women on auction blocks, were incur when we come to appreciate it more
ordinary sights in ordinary cities throughout fully. Over against the fashionable trope that
the civilized world. To stop at these signposts
human universality is nothing but a Western
of moral development is not to forget how far
we have to go. But these examples remind us conceit and necessarily conspiratorial, I
that historical analysis neednt be a vehicle for myself want to hold on to the identity and
scepticism or an argument for relativism. It also dignity of humanity as a species. Read in this
reminds us that humankind, on occasion, register, the insight that charity should be
makes moral progress and sustains our
extended to any needy person regardless of
attempt to make more. (Neiman, 2002: xvii)
status, national identity, or gender constitutes
Other voices are readily available to provide a moment of progress. Of course there is
supporting testimony. From different per- nothing inevitable about this; progress is not
spectives the philosopher Gordon Graham the same as teleology in the moral sphere.
tellingly reminds us that [m]odern relativists The point is that there is the possibility of
rarely, if ever, speak in favour of child sacrifice moral progress in particular spaces and it is a
[or] trial by ordeal (Graham, 1997: 216), mistake to give up this aspiration. More, giv-
while Terry Eagleton highlights the difficulty ing up on progress as an ethical ambition has
that radical moral relativists have with tribes, profound dangers: Scruples about using
like Aristotles, which find nothing wrong moral language responsibly should lead us to
with slavery. Does this make it acceptable? use it responsibly, not to abandon it entirely
he goes on; Is the point to understand the leaving the moral ammunition in unscrupu-
cannibals rather than to change them? If so, lous hands (Neiman, 2002: xvxvi). It also
why does this not also apply to drug traffick- confuses how things really are with how we
ers? (Eagleton, 2004: 150). Richard Draytons feel about them. As Eagleton (2004: 106)
conclusion to his investigations into the recip- tellingly remarks, Racism is evil is not the
rocal connection between science, empire same kind of proposition as I always find the
and ideals of improvement in British culture, smell of fresh newsprint blissful.
are also worth repeating: it was only within
the lifetime of my parents that it became 4 Progress as a local ambition
accepted that women and the poor have as It almost goes without saying that progress as
much right to vote as propertied men, that an epistemic possibility and progress as an
light skins should signal no more dignity or ethical aspiration have to be thought of as

local ambitions. Almost. But not entirely. Notes

The global, we now often hear, is local at 1. This episode is recounted in several obituar-
every point. The whole point of the rudimen- ies. See Gary Shapiro, Remembering Sidney
tary first approximation towards a geography Morgenbesser, The New York Sun 3 August
of the idea of progress that I have tried to 2004, p. 14; also the obituary in The Times
8 September 2004.
assemble here has been to root that concept
2. It is indeed ironic, and all too telling, that a
in the circumstances of its deployment. A full recent sketch of fifty key spatial thinkers con-
geography of the idea will succeed, I believe, spicuously fails to grapple spatially with the
in dethroning the idea of a placeless Progress knowledge that is there surveyed. This
with a capital P. At the same time it will, I absence of any self-referential awareness has
hope, reinstall located progress with a small been tellingly identified by Elspeth Graham
p. At particular times, in particular settings, (2005: 182) who observes that At the end of
progress towards truer knowledge and better Key thinkers, the reader is left little wiser as to
moral action has been achieved; at particular how and to what extent place does make a
times, in particular settings it has not. difference to the creation of knowledge.
Modern conventions like allowing working 3. Indeed he reminisced in a letter to Peter
Haggett in 1967 that the vistas for a letter-
people to withdraw their labour or insisting
head . . . become enormous. How about a
that ambulances speeding to an accident large sow with lots of little piglets about their
should not be impeded just for the fun of it basic function, labelled suckers? For this
represent hard-won advances and, as quotation, the material on the beginnings of
Eagleton (2004: 15) insists, anyone who Progress in Geography, and the comments on
feels oppressed by such norms is seriously Chorleys conception of progress in the fol-
oversensitive; equally Zygmund Bauman lowing paragraph, I am much indebted
(1993: 12) is justified in reminding us that in to Peter Haggett. Letter to the author,
America, the shame of Vietnam boosted the 20 January 2005.
development of hi-tech weaponry much
more than it did moral self-scrutiny. And of References
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Saying yes without saying yes
to progress: comments on David
Livingstones 2005 Progress in
Human Geography lecture
Trevor J. Barnes*
Department of Geography, 1984 West Mall, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
Reading David Livingstones paper reminded and contradictions of lives lived, even Henrys
me of Ian McEwans (2005) recent novel, own seemingly virtuous and ordered life.
Saturday. Set in London, post-Afghanistan, It seems to me that Davids paper traces
pre-Iraq, Hans Blix bleating in the back- the opposite arc in its line of argument. It
ground, anti-war demonstrators marching begins with complications, messiness and
down Tottenham Court Road, the protago- contradictions, but ends trying to assert
nist, Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon at something bigger and superordinate, some-
University College Hospital, is torn between thing exceeding life itself. I think this is a mis-
his belief in progress and the grisly events he take. The problem is that David wants to
sees not only on TV and in the newspapers, have his cake and eat it. He wants to cele-
but on the streets of London, and, in the brate the importance of the local, its contin-
climactic conclusion, in his own home. gency, variety, and concreteness. I take that
Driving his silver Mercedes S500 with to be at the heart of his larger project of
cream upholstery in Bloomsbury, listening to geographies of knowledge of which he says
Schubert on yet another of the ages his present paper is a contribution (see also
wondrous machines, Henry quotes Peter Livingstone, 2002; 2003). But at the same
Medawar to himself: To deride the hopes of time he wants to go beyond the local, to say
progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last something more general, more definitive, and
word in poverty of spirit and meanness of more lasting, something that surpasses the
mind (McEwan, 2005: 75, 77). But all fleeting here and now, the contingent there
around him, outside the car, is evidence of and then. To do so he wants to judge and
the ages regress torture victims, terrorism, compare across different local contexts. He
genocide, war. wants the security of knowing progress is
By the end of Saturday, Henry is less con- possible. If not, he implies, barbarians will
fident of progress. The term is too large and soon be at the gates.
all encompassing, too abstract and too sure of While I disagree strongly with the conclu-
itself, to cover the complications, messiness, sion, I want to begin by acknowledging the
*Email: tbarnes@geog.ubc.ca

Trevor J. Barnes 581
elegance, creativity, and sophistication of the 1970s apartheid Johannesburg. It is in this

paper, as well as its formidable scholarship. double geography that we see the inconsis-
The paper was a great pleasure to read. tencies, hesitancies, disarray, and convolu-
Equally, it was a great pleasure to hear tions of lives, ideas, and their imbrications in
Davids wonderful delivery in mellifluous particular times and places. We also see the
tenor Irish brogue at the Royal Geographical difficulty of asserting any notion of progress,
Society (RGS). This imposing Victorian red- of asserting some Archimedean point that lies
brick building at the end of Exhibition Road above the world allowing judgment to be
was the perfect venue given it has been so rendered.
often the place from which British geographi- But it is some version of this Archimedean
cal expeditions seeking progress convened point that I think David in the last part of his
and set out.1 The history of the RGS paper seeks to locate. He would likely deny it.
enshrines such famous names as Livingstone, He says the kind of progress he wants is with
Stanley, Scott, Younghusband, Shackleton, a lower case p, and not the upper case kind
Hunt and Hillary, as the RGS website has it, of Progressivism (Livingstone, 2005: 17). It is
many of whom were precisely in the Progress a partial, local, chastened, and piece-
business (http://www.rgs.org/). meal progress, and not absolute, universal,
The most impressive part of the paper for bold, and all at once (Livingstone, 2005: 17,
me was the idea of a double geography of 19). I am not convinced that such a small p
progress. As David deftly illustrates using his form of progress exists, however, and it seems
five case studies, geographers throughout the to me that, as in Davids paper, such a concep-
Enlightenment imbued progress with a geog- tion quickly slides into the big P form in spite
raphy: Jedidiah Morses idea of an inexorable of his good intentions. I think it is best to drop
progressive movement from East to West talk of progress altogether. To hanker after
across the United States (Livingstone, 2005: some version of it is more trouble than it is
5); John Pinkertons selected spaces of civi- worth. Joseph Schumpeter in a different con-
lization and based on his racial bigotry, preju- text talked about the need to face life
dice and intolerance; Petr Kropotkins thesis unflinchingly. I think we need to face life
of mutual aid to be realized in part by the unflinchingly without progress.
teaching of a progressive geography; The Progress as an idea requires some means of
Gang of Fours original conception of this assessment to ascertain whether change has
journal predicated on the general progress been good (progress) or bad (regress). That
attending the unity of human and physical sci- might be couched in terms of rationality,
ences; and David Smiths (2000: 2) moral moral values, or even aesthetic form.
geography of progress and set against the Without such criteria, there is no benchmark
coal-face of human misery the location of for evaluation. It is not clear to me, though,
which admits neither ambiguity nor uncer- how such criteria can be expressed in terms
tainty. But, in turn, those geographies were of Davids lexicon: partial, local, chastened,
underpinned by yet other geographies: and piecemeal. What does a partial criterion
Morses location on the East Coast of the of progress look like or a local one?
Early Republic; Pinkertons imbibing of ration- Certainly, in a given time and place, in a
alism in the refined lowlands of (Gothic!) given local context, one can set out criteria
Scotland; Kropotkins saturation in a vibrant for progress. But if those criteria themselves
late-nineteenth century St Petersburg intel- are allowed to vary from one context to
lectual culture; the Gang of Fours own aca- another then use of the term progress seems
demic geographies of truth spots and at best an empty compliment to pay to
heterotopias; and David Smiths searing change. It means only that you have suc-
experience studying the Black Townships of ceeded in realizing those criteria that you

582 Saying yes without saying yes to progress
have set yourself. But it says nothing about like that of spatial science. David Harvey
whether those criteria are ones that should (1972: 6), a former spatial scientist himself,
have been chosen in the first place. To over- announced the change of criteria in a now
come this problem one needs to assert criteria famous paper given at the annual meeting of
from outside the local context. But because the Association of American Geographers
he upholds lower case p progress David is in 1971 in Boston:
loath to do this. In this sense, David is stuck on
the horns of a dilemma. He can assert [Geographys] quantitative revolution has run
its course and diminishing marginal returns are
progress as defined by local context, but will apparently setting in as . . . [it] serve[s] to tell us
then end up with some form of relativism, and less and less about anything of great relevance . . .
which he wants to avoid. Or he can seek There is a clear disparity between the
some extra-local criteria of progress, but will sophisticated theoretical and methodological
end up with capital P progressivism, which framework which we are using and our ability
to say anything really meaningful about events
he also wants to avoid. If there is a middle as they unfold around us . . . In short, our
ground, I am not clear what it is. Progress paradigm is not coping well.
seems to me a concept with an excluded mid-
dle. It exists or it doesnt exist. Sort of Harvey uses the term paradigm, but he is
progress is an idea difficult to conceive. talking about criteria of progress. The old set
These tensions can be illustrated from are no good he implies. Those using them
the recent history of human geography. might be making progress, but they are not
Different approaches establish certain crite- achieving Progress. I am unclear how David
ria of progress, and on those criteria local would adjudicate between a David Harvey
progress is made. So, spatial scientists view of progress and a space cadet view of
upheld as criteria of progress logical consis- progress. Staying within the local context
tency, statistical precision, and theoretical leads to circularity, and going outside the con-
parsimony. On those grounds, local progress text leads to an Archimedean perspective.
was achieved. Contrast the initial forays of Neither option would seem attractive for
the University of Washington space cadets David.
in their breakout 1959 scientific volume The larger question is whether progress is
Studies of highway development and geo- the kind of term, given the intellectual bag-
graphic change (Garrison et al., 1959) with gage it carries, that is amenable to the lower
their work appearing just eight years later in case p form that David wishes it to occupy.
the edited collection Quantitative geography Davids talk of progress as a regulative ideal,
(Garrison and Marble, 1967). In compari- one that aspires to produce truer accounts,
son, their earlier work was cruder, more and moral progress reinforces my query. I
lumbering, more hesitant. In the later one, simply do not think that these three terms
they are in full flight: confident, sophisti- regulative, truer, and moral progress can
cated, knowing. In this sense, there is bear the weight of the new connotations
progress. But it is of a limited kind. Progress David wants to put on them.
is relative to the criteria that that group By regulative ideal, David (Livingstone,
chose to make progress on. David wants to 2005: 18) means the aim to make progress
go beyond this limited notion of local whether or not we achieve it. To make his
progress. But it is not clear how. As we case, David cites Bruno Latours (2004a;
know, spatial scientists were later increas- 2004b) recent Harpers Magazine article (and
ingly challenged by a very different which appeared in fuller form in Critical
approach, Marxism, which had its own cri- Inquiry). But regulative ideal easily slips into
teria of progress and which were nothing regulative prescription: do this to achieve

Trevor J. Barnes 583
progress. This is the case in Latours recent says, are wheel[s] that play no part in the
writings. In order to make headway, to make mechanism.
progress, on issues like global warning, Latour Finally, an aspiration to moral progress
now argues it is necessary to stop doing what slides easily to fixed moral values, and ethical
he used to do. Formerly he urged the whole- fundamentals. There is a hint of this where
sale opening of the black boxes of scientific David (Livingstone, 2005: 21) suggests that
knowledge (including claims to global warm- identity and dignity of humanity as a species
ing). He was keenly suspicious of final judg- be the basis of moral progress. This would be
ments, chary of closed conclusions. But now the fixed point, the foundation, for a moral
opening black boxes, he implies, is like opening code. But those very terms are themselves
Pandoras box. It releases all the sins of open to historical definition. Think of human-
humanity. Lids should now remain firmly on. ity and how that term has been variously
Hence his prescriptive injunction: dont do as interpreted in different times and places. And
I did but as I now say. of course why stop at humanity? What about
Similarly, the hope for truer accounts other living creatures? We can, of course,
readily gravitates into a desire for true make definitions of terms like humanity rela-
accounts. Belief in a truer account presum- tive to the local context, but how then does
ably also requires belief in a true account and that help judge moral progress across differ-
against which it is measured. This is the ent contexts and to which David seemingly
implication of Davids assessment of Steven aspires? In places, there also seems a sugges-
Shapins (1994) A social history of truth. tion that the moral values to which we should
There is ultimately a true account of the aspire are self-evident. I certainly agree with
acquisition of knowledge during the Scientific all of the values David puts forth, but I dont
Revolution, and Shapins brings us closer to it think it is because they are self-evident.
than anyone else yet. I am not convinced Historically there have been too many cases
that words like true or truer are useful in this in which seemingly self-evident moral
judgement. For sure, Shapin is exact in his progress is enacted but which is not self-
sources, is a keen archivist, tracking down evident at all. I suspect several expeditions
lost documents, and he does not deliberately originating at the RGS in the name of moral
mislead or lie. But does that make his account progress rested on what their convenors saw
truer than previous accounts? Of course, as self-evident assumptions, but which David
there may have been charlatan historians of and I would now question. The term moral
that period in the past, but the vast majority progress has too much blood on its hands to
are as scrupulous as Shapin. What makes function as a generalized hope of the kind
Shapins book compelling is not that it offers a David suggests.
truer account, closer to the historical facts There is one final point. My uneasiness
than others, but because of its provocative with Davids argument is increased by his
thesis that seventeenth-century scientific strategy of contrasting progress with the
truth is utterly bound up with social variables most extreme form of relativism: that every
of class, gender and race. As a thesis it is an view is as good as any other. Even Richard
interesting turn in the conversation, it incites, Rorty (1982: 166) says that no one except
it stimulates, it resonates. But such features for the occasional co-operative freshman
are pitched in a different register than talk of believes that position. Critics often intro-
true and truer. Shapin provides warrant for duce this extreme form as the incontrovert-
his argument, but warrant is not the same as ible argument against all forms of relativism,
making claims to the truth or to truer repre- making their non-relativist case appear unas-
sentations. The latter, as Rorty (1982: 167) sailable. Terry Eagletons withering satire

584 Saying yes without saying yes to progress
makes him a dab hand at this strategy. disagreeing with him easier and more pleasant.
Richard Dawkins also knows how to turn the I hope he doesnt think that with friends like me
screw. No one is a social constructionist at who needs enemies.
30,000 feet he said to put down jetsetting
cultural critics of science. Apart from ignor-
ing the large number of different forms that Note
relativism has taken, such a strategy creates 1. The building that currently houses the RGS,
a series of dualisms. This is evident also in Lowther Lodge, was completed in 1874, and
Davids paper: either progress or relativism; until recently the main entrance was on
either regulative ideals or an anything goes Kensington Gore rather than Exhibition Road.
deconstruction; either accounts aspiring to Founded in 1830, the RGS moved to the
building in 1911.
the truth or accounts aspiring to career
self-interest; and either moral progress or
a world of child sacrifice, slavery, and
cannibalism. References
Garrison, W.L and Marble, D.F., editors 1967:
Such dualisms, however, produce the Quantitative geography. Part I: economic and cultural
stark oppositions I hoped Davids larger proj- topics. Northwestern University studies in geography,
ect of geographies of knowledge would number 13. Evanston, IL: Department of Geography,
avoid. I think Henry Perowne by the end of Northwestern University.
Saturday in fact, by then it is well into Garrison, W.L., Berry, B.J.L., Marble, D.F.,
Nystuen, J.D. and Morrill, R.L. 1959: Studies in
Sunday morning comes to a similar conclu- highway development and geographic change. Seattle,
sion. He recognizes that, because of the WA: University of Washington Press.
complexity, serendipity, and sheer cussed- Harvey, D. 1972: Revolutionary and counter-
ness found in the thick of things, found in life, revolutionary theory in geography and the problem of
it is difficult to use words like progress with ghetto formation. Antipode 4(2), 113.
Joyce, J. 1990: Ulysses. New York: Vintage International
its suggestion of a clean, tidy line of direc- (first published 1922).
tionality, and an unimpeachable belief in Latour, B. 2004a: The last critique. Harpers Magazine
itself. If only life could be like that. The alter- April, 1520.
native is not the invasion of the barbarians. 2004b: Why has critique run out of steam? From
matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry
Or even the negativity of Morganbessers
30, 22548.
double positive, Yeah, yeah. It is to take life Livingstone, D.N. 2002: Science, space and hermeneu-
face-on, courageously, and without expecta- tics. The Hettner lectures 2001. Heidelberg:
tion that it will improve. James Joyce (1990: University of Heidelberg.
783), another great Irishman, gives the 2003: Putting science in its place: geographies of
scientific knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago
riposte to Morganbesser, the triple positive,
Press.
and at the very end of an epic day con- 2005: Putting progress in its place. Manuscript
fronted face-on, and courageously: yes I prepared for the Progress in Human Geography
said yes I will Yes. My argument is that we lecture, annual meeting of the RGS/IBG, London,
can still say yes, without saying yes to 1 September.
McEwan, I. 2005: Saturday. London: Jonathan
progress.
Cape.
Rorty, R. 1982: The consequences of pragmatism
Acknowledgements (essays 197280). Minneapolis: University of
I would like to thank my mother for Minnesota.
delivering countless cups of tea and plates of Shapin, S. 1994: A social history of truth: civility and
science in seventeenth-century England. Chicago:
digestive biscuits as I wrote this essay at her
University of Chicago Press.
kitchen table in Cornwall. I would also like Smith, D.M. 2000: Moral progress in human geogra-
to thank David Livingstone for his good phy: transcending the place of good fortune. Progress
friendship, which ironically made the task of in Human Geography 24, 118.

Including the excluded middle
David N. Livingstone
Trevor Barnes is the best of sparring partners. at worst incoherences in the case he makes. I
With razor sharp perception he reaches to the will focus here on just two or three. First,
heart of arguments and subjects them to Trevor is critical of the very idea of their being
scrutiny. Within Geography, I doubt that I local, partial, or chastened progress without
could have had a more thoughtful interlocutor some grander species of Progress of tran-
on the subject of progress, nor one whose scendental, Archimedian, or universal stripe.
convictions are expressed with greater clarity I am accused of seeking to retrieve a concept
or vigour. Dwelling here on our differences is with an excluded middle. To Trevor, evi-
likely to obscure the many things we share and dently, it is all or nothing; it is either big-P
it is well to acknowledge this in advance of Progress or none at all; either Universal
putting on paper some of our disagreements Progress or nothing at all; either transcenden-
on matters we have enjoying debating face- tal Progressivism or no progress of any kind.
to-face for quite a few years. I should acknowl- This means that because I dont buy into, say,
edge too the power of Trevors critique and Evolutionary Progressivism or some version
the need to ponder carefully the counter argu- of Marxian Teleology, or any of a host of sim-
ments that he has advanced. I cannot do jus- ilar underwriting ideological systems, Trevor
tice to them all in the following remarks. All thinks I need to give up all notions of making
are worthy of sustained reflection. I can only progress. I think this is to move too fast.
gesture towards a response to a few of them. Trevor is pressing on us a stark either/or.
I will pass over Trevors initial comments on Now there is an irony here. For in the latter
the bulk of my project to put progress in its part of his interrogation Trevor accuses me
place save to note my appreciation for his of forcing on my readers a suite of obnoxious
approval of my efforts to begin the task of dualisms a choice between either progress
working out a double geography of the idea. or relativism; either regulative ideals or an
For the focal point of our difference rotates anything goes deconstruction; either
around the wider implications of my historical accounts aspiring to the truth or accounts
inquiries that I began to work towards in the aspiring to career self-interest. Here, it
final section of my analysis. I believe we can seems, Trevor wants to occupy precisely the
see some of the errors in earlier geographical kind of middle ground that he denies me on
renditions of progress. I consider that itself to ideas of progress.
be a mark of progress. Trevor does not. The Trevors reason for categorizing the piece-
guts of our disagreement, I think, is to do with meal version of progress that I try to retrieve
whether trying to retain some regulative ideal as an empty concept rotates around the claim
of progress, not least given the subversive that before we can call upon it we need to lay
implications of the double geography I articu- out general criteria for measuring progress. It
late, is more trouble than it is worth. Trevor seems we cannot have any conception of
thinks it certainly is; I think we give up some- progress without transcendental standards
thing important if we jettison all notions of against which it can be calibrated. I take
making progress. it that criteria here operate as a set of
As I read Trevors reflections, I am struck necessary and sufficient conditions which
by a series of what I think are at best ironies, need to be met before a claim to progress can

586 Including the excluded middle
justifiably be made. Several things warrant not mean that local articulations of progress
saying here. This requirement, I think, pre- operate with simply stipulative definitions.
supposes a kind of foundationalism which But we should not jump from that acknowl-
stipulates that we cannot make a warranted edgement to the view that comparisons
claim about something unless we have indu- between ideals of progress are eternally
bitable foundations on which to rest it. I think incommensurate. Clearer articulations of dif-
this is a mistake. In my view we are war- ferent communities senses of progress might
ranted in believing many propositions even if lead to redescriptions or reorientations with-
they do not conform to some supposed pre- out the need to set out in advance universal
determined foundational stipulations. Indeed criteria which must be met or metaphysical
in my view, a person can rightly claim to know systems that serve as guarantors. Of course
something without knowing that they have I am not claiming that achieving this is
fulfilled any suite of necessary and sufficient easy; I dont have any sure-shot formula for
conditions indeed without knowing delineating in advance what every species of
whether there even are any such conditions. progress would look like. Besides, different
We can surely with good reason say that we ideals of progress may just remain that differ-
know other minds exist, or that we know ent, and in consequence we may have to live
something because we remember it, without with a suite of incommensurate articulations
having any idea what conditions or criteria are of progress. My point is rather that if we give
supposed to be fulfilled if they could ever be up on the ideal of making progress as an aspi-
agreed upon for such beliefs to be justified. ration we will not see the need to even
Trevor observes at one point that the label engage the conversation.
humanity has been variously interpreted in Trevor and I plainly disagree on the impli-
different times and places. Sure. But the dif- cations of giving up progress as a regulative
ficulty of finding a precise definition hardly ideal. Let me, in passing, readily acknowledge
stops us recognizing humans when we meet that Trevor is right to say that regulative ideal
them. easily slips into regulative prescription. But
This points to another irony. It is surely the correct response to that is not that we
strange that Trevor Barnes of all people give up regulative ideals: it is that we dont let
should take this line of attack for he has been them drift into places that they shouldnt.
among the most elegant exponents of anti- Having said that, I do want to comment on
foundationalism in our discipline. Just why Trevors reading of Steve Shapins account of
we need to install a body of universal criteria truth-making in the seventeenth century. He
before coherently using the term progress in clearly does not think that A social history of
specific contexts is not obvious to me. Indeed truth should be understood as aiming for a
Trevor admits that in a given local context, truer account of what really went on during
one can set out criteria for progress but the Scientific Revolution. The books value, to
seems to consider that if somewhere else dif- him, is that it provokes conversation, or stim-
ferent criteria are deployed then the notion of ulates debate, or some such. But if that is so I
progress at all is somehow rendered impo- cannot make sense of his own description of it
tent. The reason, apparently, is because that as a provocative thesis that seventeenth-cen-
implicates a relativism which I am taken to tury scientific truth is utterly bound up with
reject. But again this is to move far too social variables of class, gender and race. If
quickly. Relativisms come in many different that is not a truth claim about what scientific
forms cultural, moral, epistemic and so on. truth was really about, I dont know what is.
And so do realisms. That progress is relative Nor can I understand what Trevor is after
to cultural circumstances is beyond doubt, when he tells us that Shapin provides war-
though in passing I would note that this does rant for his argument. What can this mean if

it is not warrant for the truth of the claims he assert that a state of affairs pertains. Shaking
is making? Trevor is convinced that notions off the hope of making some cognitive
like true and false play no part in the scheme progress as a regulative ideal may turn out to
(though in the same breath he assures us that be more difficult than Trevor thinks. The
Shapin does not lie). What then is it warrant same, I suspect, is the case in the moral
for? Telling a good story? Being provocative? sphere. Trevor expresses anxiety about moral
I am not clear. And the same sort of thing sur- values sliding towards what he calls ethical
faces, I think, when Trevor gets around to fundamentals. But how, in his terms, the vio-
accusing me of holding to the sophomore lence of such slippage can be challenged with-
error of considering relativism as the notion out some sense of a morally better way I find
that every view is as good as any other. it hard to see.
Right away let me acknowledge that Rorty is A final thought. I confess admiration of the
much more subtle than his opponents some- call that Trevor advertises in his concluding
times make out; that is why I referred to cadenza to just say yes, an unflinching yes,
Vulgar Rortyism. Nonetheless Trevor gives us in the face of lifes vicissitudes. Yet, however
no indication of his grounds for discriminating much we may admire this Joycean triple
between competing views so as to identify yes, I am doubtful of its power to sustain our
which are not as good as others. Can that task intellectual, political and moral endeavours
be undertaken without introducing concepts within the academy and beyond. Whether
that are next-door neighbour to progress the ideal of keeping conversations going is a
better and worse? better basis for life and scholarship than trying
In my view, Trevors conviction that talk of to find out truths about the world and trying
truth should be laid aside in adjudicating to change it for the better, I must leave our
scholarly argument leaves us in a dilemma readers to judge. The kind of progress I hold
about how to read his present reflections on out for is emphatically not of the variety
progress itself. In his own terms, his response whose contours are marked by the clean,
to my lecture cannot be read as a cognitive tidy line of directionality that Trevor deplores
claim that there is no such thing as progress. If in his final words. Rather it is messy, hesitant,
that were so, he would be making a truth uncertain, and vulnerable before the powerful
claim of the very sort he eschews. But in fact forces of Universal Progress and Anti-
I believe that that is precisely what he is doing. Progress. But occupying that in-between
The passion and conviction with which he space is only excluded if we choose to exclude
denies progress suggest to me that there is it. In my view, seeking to include the
something more here than a concern to excluded middle is a project definitely worth
advance, say, a provocative thesis; it is to the trouble.

Livingstone Putting Progress in Its Place

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Progress in Human Geography

Putting progress in its place

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Citations (this article cites 18 articles hosted on the

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Progress in Human Geography Lecture*

Putting progress in its place

I Progress? Knowledge: The Seed of All Progress. At

2006 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0309132506070168

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Deluze and Derrida to take a random II Contesting progress: nature,

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rational autonomous subject. As Tuvesan 1 Millennial inevitability

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measurement problems of a major order in Chorleys History of Geomorphology had

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local ambitions. Almost. But not entirely. Notes

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elegance, creativity, and sophistication of the 1970s apartheid Johannesburg. It is in this

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